Greek Lands and Letters

by Francis Greenleaf Allinson; Anne C. E. Allinson

The heart of Bœotia’s literature lies in the Hesiodic poetry. Hesiod has a dual personality. As a half mythical “titulary president” of a school of poetry localized near Mount Helicon and rivalling the epic school, in Asia Minor and the islands, whose eponymous hero was Homer; as traditional author of the “Theogony,” which was the manual of mythology for the Greeks, ranking in educational value almost with the Iliad and Odyssey, and of the “Works and Days,” which was a collection of widely accepted ethical maxims, he seems to lose his home in Bœotia and to belong like Homer to the whole of Greece. But unlike Homer he is universally believed to have existed, and to have written a definite body of poetry which only later came to include many additions by unknown hands. We may, then, for our purposes, justly consider him as an individual with local habitation and a name. His family, either before his birth or while he was a child, immigrated from an Æolian colony in Asia Minor to Æolian Bœotia. They were farmers and lived in the little town of Ascra, which was perched on a conical hill opposite the larger mass of Helicon, to the north of the entrance to the valley of the Muses. It was destroyed by Thespiæ, and was deserted in Pausanias’s time. But “the tower” was standing which is still a conspicuous landmark and gives to the entire hill the name of Pyrgaki. Modern travellers are attracted by the wide and beautiful view which the hill commands.

Ascra itself, in Hesiod’s peevish opinion, was a miserable village, bad in winter, abominable in summer, good at no time. He could, however, when a boy, tend his sheep on the slopes of Helicon and see the Muses in his dreams. At some time he had a lawsuit with his brother about his inheritance, and became embittered by disappointment. This and the difficulties of his life as a husbandman led him to see the world in the hard colours of uncorrected realism. Only a few enthusiasts pretend to find in his “Works and Days” the beauty of the “Georgics,” in which Virgil was his avowed imitator. The Roman poet combined with a delicate temperament the education of his age, and tried to show to his countrymen, the already weary masters of the world, the victims of an over-luxurious civilization, that in farming lay a potent charm and a remedial grace. But Hesiod lived in the eighth century B. C. and farmed for his living. To us, grown more democratic than the later Greeks and Romans, his chief appeal is that of the “mouthpiece of obscure handworkers in the earliest centuries of Greek history, the poet of their daily labours, sufferings and wrongs, the singer of their doubts and infantine reflections on the world in which they had to toil.”

As agricultural life is concerned with certain permanent factors in human experience and is also proverbially conservative, Hesiod’s picture of it is probably true, in its broad outlines, of after centuries and of many another place than Bœotia. Later Greek writers were not attracted by the homely subject, and the “Works and Days” is the sole specimen in Greece of a kind of literature which is practically born out of the soil and out of nature’s varied processes.

In this didactic poem we are introduced to a community whose work and pleasures were governed by the seasons. The white blossoms of the spring, the swallow lifting her wing at dawn, the song of the cuckoo, the tender green of the fig tree, the early rains, all meant the planting and nursing of the seeds. The summer heat that brought the cicada’s shrill cry brought, too, a little leisure for picnicking in the shade of a rock by a stream, off creamy cake and goat’s milk and wine. But in the cooler hours the corn had to be threshed on the stone floors, and the hay stored in the barns. In the autumn the falling leaves and the crane’s migratory call showed that wood must be cut, ploughshares made, the proper servants and steers procured, and the grapes gathered and pressed. In the winter the industrious man had to look after his household store, much as he was tempted to linger by the forge and saunter in the warm porticoes. For in January the whirlwind of the north often swept down from Thrace, the Earth howled and long and loud the forests roared. The oaks and pines were hurled from hilltops. The beasts of the wild wood crept low to escape the drifting snow, the oxen and goats cowered in their stalls. Only the young daughter in her pretty chamber under her mother’s roof was safe. The farmer had to put on thicker underclothing and a woollen coat and oxhide shoes lined with thick socks, and pull his cap down over his ears as he hurried home at nightfall. Thus intertwined in Hesiod’s Bœotian mind were poetry and prudence. And prudence predominated in his catalogue of the lucky and unlucky days which next to the seasons regulated the farmer’s life. From sheep-shearing to marriage everything must have its proper day. This was true also of seafaring life, for which Hesiod gives rather grudging directions. Sailors and fishermen, potters and smiths mingled in friendly intercourse with the husbandmen. Beggars and vagrants came and went. And news of the distant world and a kindling of dull fancy came with the wandering minstrels. Standards in such a world were simple. Men ate asphodel and mallows and had a creed as pleasing and as natural: to work hard and save a little every year, to be hospitable and neighbourly, to be good to one’s parents and faithful to one’s wife, never to abuse a trust and to sacrifice to the gods with clean hands and a pure heart.

Hesiod has little to say of holidays, but as Bœotia grew older celebrations of all kinds seem to have flourished conspicuously, even for Greece, which took so kindly to the bright colours, lively crowds, and stately processions of feast days. Many of these, occurring quadrennially, attracted delegates and visitors from other states, even from contemptuous Athens. Such were the Musæa, the great national contests in poetry and music on Mount Helicon in the valley of the Muses; the games and literary competitions at Apollo’s sanctuary on Mount Ptoön; and the Eleutheria, the Games of Freedom, at Platæa. More local festivals, also, like the athletic and musical contests at Thespiæ known as the Games of Love, and the Royal Games at Lebadeia in honour of King Zeus, often drew crowds of visitors. But many of us, could we have known ancient Bœotia, would have chosen homelier occasions for our visits. We would have sought out Tanagra on the feast day of Hermes, the Ram-bearer, when the handsomest boy of the town, in memory of a similar service rendered by Hermes at the time of a plague, bore a lamb on his shoulders about the city walls. And in the autumn at Platæa we would have attended the annual memorial service for those who died in the great battle. At daybreak myrrh and garlands were carried to the tombs, young boys chosen for their free birth bore jars of oil and precious ointment and of wine and milk, and the chief magistrate put on a purple robe and poured out a libation, saying, “I drink to those who lost their lives for the liberty of Greece.” Or at the sanctuary of Demeter at Mycalessus we would have watched the people from the surrounding farms lay at the feet of her image all kinds of autumn fruits, which they knew would keep fresh the whole year through.

This festival of Thanksgiving was doubtless of very ancient origin, as was also the spring festival of the Little Dædala, celebrated every few years in many Bœotian communities. The peasants and townspeople poured into the woods and chose, from certain signs, an oak tree out of which they made an image; and this image they set up and worshipped to the accompaniment of festal merriment. The custom originated in Platæa, if we may judge from the story believed by the common people. Hera, in a not unwonted fit of temper, had withdrawn to Eubœa, and Zeus could not persuade her to come back. But old Cithæron, lord of Platæa, advised him to play on her jealousy by dressing up a wooden image and telling her that he was going to marry Platæa, the wife of Asopus. Hera flew back, and in memory of the divine reunion the “Little Dædala” was instituted.

Every sixty years all Bœotia, its big and little cities, its farmsteads and fishing towns, united in the Great Dædala. The crowds gathered at Platæa. Long processions, representing each town, bore their own wooden images to the summit of Cithæron, seeking a narrow plateau where the snows had melted. Here altars were built and victims burned. And at night the great flames rose into the sky and were seen from afar, so that the young men in Attica and beyond the Gulfs doubtless said to each other, “Bœotia is celebrating as our fathers said,” and the old men shook their heads and remembered brighter fires.

Zeus and Hera have been long forgotten, nor are the feet of Dionysus heard upon the mountain, but still winter gives way to spring and the heart of man is glad. The hard-working people of modern Bœotia keep holiday when spring blooms anew, and Mount Cithæron gives them as of old the soft green of its budding oak leaves, the vivacious laughter of its loosened waters.

CHAPTER XV
THERMOPYLÆ

“Dic, hospes, Spartæ nos te hic vidisse iacentes